Jiang Zhaoxue is a folklore columnist and has never believed in ghosts and gods.
Until her grandmother passed away, she returned to Duyin Village, which she had not returned to for seventeen years.
When the old man at the entrance of the village saw her, his first words were not condolences, but:
"The bride is back."
During the first seven nights of my grandmother's life, white lights were hung high in the village and paper money was everywhere. But at midnight, the ancestral temple suddenly beat the celebratory drums, and the white lights turned red one by one. Villagers wearing linen and wearing mourning carried out a red sedan, knelt in front of her door, and forced her to get on the sedan.
Village Rule 1: For the first seven nights, if you hear grandma calling the door, you cannot answer.
Article 2 of the village rules: red and white collide with each other, and the living person cannot look back.
Village Rule 3: If you are sitting in the sedan chair, do not lift your hijab.
Article 4 of the village rules: No one whose name appears in the genealogy cannot live past the age of twenty-five.
Jiang Zhaoxue thought it was ridiculous superstition until she saw a tablet in the sedan chair.
Her name is written on the tablet.
What's even weirder is that the dead grandmother is standing outside the door knocking on the door, and her voice rings over and over again:
"Xuexue, don't get on the sedan. The groom is not a dead person, but the whole village."
She escaped into the ancestral temple, opened the family tree, and found that every twenty-five years a girl in the Jiang family would "get married." Those girls were not married, their names were all crossed out with red lines, and their birthdays were changed to death anniversaries.
The empty space on the last page is waiting to be written about her.
The villagers said she was a sacrifice.
Grandma said she was the bride.
The genealogy says she died long ago.
The other "Jiang Zhaoxue" in the sedan chair lifted his hijab and smiled at her:
"You're finally back. This time, it's my turn to live."
Only this night did she realize that the most terrifying thing in Duyin Village was not ghosts.
All living people are waiting for her to die for the second time.
